


the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house

by heylifeitsemily



Series: do android detectives dream of electric sheep? [4]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Holding Hands, Introspection, No Dialogue, Nostalgia, Pre-Relationship, Vague Spoilers for Nick's Companion Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 17:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: Home isn’t so much a place as it is a time.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine
Series: do android detectives dream of electric sheep? [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1482593
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house

Home isn’t so much a place as it is a time. Velma looks at dilapidated vending machines and the parts of Codsworth that are more rust than metal, and she remembers all the possibility at their fingertips. Home was her and Nate getting dressed to the nines to watch the cheapest, dumbest flick at the theater just for kicks. Home was making airplane noises while Shaun giggled from his highchair. Home was overplayed radio jingles and the scent of too many perfumes intermingling at the coffee shop.

Home was long, long ago.

The house still has its foundations, the crib untouched in some cruel irony. Velma sleeps in the next-door neighbour’s living room so she doesn’t have to watch the paint peel off the ceiling or feel Nate’s phantom limb thrown over her at night, just heavy enough to keep her from rolling off the bed should a nightmare descend.

And with shadowy figures around every corner, monsters she couldn’t have imagined, the air thick with rot – nowadays, there’s a hell of a lot more that her imagination can run with. The only solid combat she’s found is shacking up somewhere safe for the night.

And no where’s safer than Nick’s.

He never takes a day off from teasing her for conking out on the ratty old couch in his office. She’s usually able to come up with something about blending in with the locals or the residual scent of home-brewed coffee after two centuries, and he laughs around his cigarette, and they leave it at that.

This morning, she can only manage a smile. Nick clams up before submerging himself in the file on his desk.

Nick doesn’t need to sleep, technically, or so he claims when she drags him out to eat or divvies up watch for the nights when they’re out on the road. She didn’t quite believe him when he first told her, bashful, pulling his hat down over his eyes for her peace of mind. When she wakes to find him hunched over his desk, it doesn’t always register that he’s been working the whole night through, puzzling over the latest caper to cross their path.

But he does. Safe does not equate to sound, as even in the comfort of Nick’s office she’s treated to small terrors, the kind she forgets as soon as she shoots awake. The lingering unease subsides when she catches sight of him, the neon glow of his eyes.

Velma stretches her arms overhead, fingers just glancing the rim of the lamp hanging above her. She’s been meaning to replace the bulb before it starts misbehaving again. Nick sits reclined in his chair, flipping another page in the case file he has open. His hat and trench coat hang off the nails she put into the drywall, his tie loose around his neck.

She pretends that she isn’t staring, and he pretends that he doesn’t know she’s staring, and she pretends that she doesn’t know that he’s pretending. She’ll suffocate in that web of pretense some day.

Her knees creak as she stands, and as she rounds the desk to peer over his shoulder, he hands her the mug of coffee he just brewed. His brow’s furrowed too tight, and he sends off shocks where their arms brush, a build-up of static that she’s learned to associate with stress.

_Eddie Winter_ sits at the top of the page, circled, underlined twice.

She skims the rest of it while she sips at the coffee – needs cream like a fire needs air – and it’s all fine and dandy until she makes out _Nick Valentine_ in black type.

She grabs his shoulder without really meaning to, but then his good hand comes up to rest atop hers just as absentmindedly. They go through the whole file like that, page by page, the static channeling into her fingers in an odd tingle. And then he shuts the file, and they stay like that a while longer, until all the charge dissipates into the air.

Home is a foreign concept, but maybe it used to feel like this; like watery coffee, a moth-eaten couch, unfinished business, a promise without words.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from one of my favourite poems ever, seriously I think about it constantly, izumi shikibu's "although the wind...", which goes like this:  
"although the wind  
blows terribly here,  
the moonlight also leaks  
between the roof planks  
of this ruined house."
> 
> the struggle with all of these is that the majority of them (albeit not all) are based off these 200ish word blurbs i used to write daily in an old journal - which I should really get back into the habit of but I think I need a new setting to get me there, so probably once I sit down and play the Outer Worlds. regardless, it's a balance of trying to flesh out the theme I started with, merge multiple ones together, and figure out how to fit in whatever new direction pops up in my head as I'm going through it. so here we have finding out about Eddie Winter, which was not initially planned, but Nick's office, and moreover _ Nick _ being the closest thing Velma has to home in its most abstract definitions, which was the goal of the blurb. and if you're thinking that this level of wordless communication is a cop-out so I don't have to either copy dialogue from the game or write my own, _you're right _ and i respect you for seeing through my bullshit


End file.
